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Oil and gas industry building giant walls to try to ease impact

A drilling operation is contracted near Northridge High School. Oil well drilling in Greeley on Monday, April 21, 2014. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post)

Wyatt Woods, 5, plays at his family's home as a site to drill for oil is constructed nearby. His father, Bryan, said that he is an 18-wheel trucker and that his two rigs are louder than the drilling operation has been to this point. Oil well drilling in Greeley on Monday, April 21, 2014. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post)

MEAD — Oil and gas companies are erecting a new style of walls around drilling and frack sites as the boom expands into Front Range communities.

Made of earthen-color fabric on steel frames up to 32 feet high and 800 feet long, the walls shield industrial machinery from a high school and wetlands greenbelt in Greeley, prairie homes in Windsor, and kids riding bikes and skateboards in Mead.

It is the latest innovation for companies equipped with horizontal drilling technology that are trying to solve a puzzle: how to extract more fossil fuels from under where people are living and minimize impact.

The walls help companies meet Colorado's noise limits (55-80 decibels during the day and 50-75 at night, and measured 350 feet from the source). Walls also are being considered for wildlife habitat where proposed drilling threatens mating of sage grouse.

Previously, oil and gas companies tried to ease impact of industrial operations near people by stacking hay bales and shipping containers around engines. Beyond cutting noise by 20 to 30 decibels, the fabric walls partially block the glare of floodlights and dust clouds during companies' multimonth period of drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

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But industry officials are uncertain whether their voluntary installation of walls will quell the political storm over the oil and gas boom. Rising opposition in Colorado has led to nine statewide ballot initiatives to boost local control and increase required buffers between wells and houses.

"It does help a lot," said Mead resident Brandon Cox, 26, who works in the industry. He recently escorted his children down Bridle Lane to a playground about 50 yards from a wall around a drilling rig and found the noise greatly reduced.

"The only thing," Cox said, "is the sight."

Suspicions run so high among opponents of the oil boom that some see walls more for what they enclose than as straightforward attempts to cut noise.

"This is to control what is seen," said Steve Cline, 43, a high school teacher whose family returned from vacation last summer to find a wall around the drilling rigs about 500 yards from the house they've lived in for eight years by farm fields southwest of Windsor.

Alex Bowers plays with his kids outside their home in the Liberty Ranch development in Mead, May 14, 2014. An oil and gas company built a wall around their operations to keep noise down for the neighborhood. "It works...I haven't heard a thing after they put it up" said Bowers. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

Yes, the decibels are reduced, Cline acknowledged, although his wife still is sensitive to sudden nighttime 45-decibel cracks into the relative silence of farm fields — sounds they measure from their porch using a system on their smartphones.

The wall has stayed up nine months, Cline said, pointing to how it partially blocks views across the fields of Longs Peak.

"I'd like to see them take the wall down now. We had no choice in this drilling (or the wall)," he said. "The more we develop oil and gas, the more dependent we will become on fossil fuels. The less we develop it, the more likely that we will find alternatives."

The walls are made using 4-inch-thick polyvinyl fixed to steel beams anchored in soil or cement. It takes a few days to build them, depending on length. About $125,000 maintains a wall for two months during drilling and subsequent fracking, the noisiest part of extracting oil and gas. Wind gusts present a challenge, sometimes ripping and fraying the fabric.

Encana Oil and Gas has found that noise-related complaints decrease where walls are installed, spokesman Doug Hock said.

"It has become the norm in that area (around Mead) and areas where we are drilling in the (Denver-Julesburg Basin) because we are near communities and homes. It makes sense," Hock said. "Given the concerns about noise and dust, it's certainly something we feel we need to do."

An oil and gas company built a wall around their operations to keep noise down for the neighborhood in the Liberty Ranch development in Mead, May 14, 2014. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

Local government leaders confirmed a decrease in noise complaints.

Oil and gas companies often conduct noise surveys before and after operations to comply with state limits, which the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is charged with enforcing.

COGCC officials said they received 17 noise complaints in 2012, 13 in 2013 and 14 so far this year, and they investigate all of them.

"What's funny is that at some of these open houses, we'll get just as many people saying 'Build me a wall' as people saying 'Heck no, I want to see the mountains' or 'What are you hiding?' " Hohmann said. "People can be suspicious of what's behind the walls.

"Does this solve it for everybody? Does it solve it for anybody? The jury is still out."

Noble Energy officials said they've been installing walls around drilling and fracking sites and find them to be effective.

The first wall erected in Mead (population 3,600), about a year ago near a school, surprised residents, said town manager Dan Dean, who serves as a liaison with state regulators. "We wondered: 'Is this a Walmart? Is it a rec center? What is this?' "

After initial shock, residents have had mixed reactions, he said.

"It does address some of the light," Dean said. "The walls do help mitigate the impact of construction."

Yet some resent the walls and say they'll be voting for stronger local control and bigger buffer zones this fall.

Watching a girls softball game at sunset by Mead Elementary — where drilling and fracking was done just beyond the school playground — six-year resident Tiffani Angus reflected on the economic benefits of oil and gas drilling in town.

But a fracking operation about a quarter mile from her home "is very noisy, sounds like an airplane taking off" — even with a sound wall. "Their trucks are destroying our roads. This is not what I moved out here for. We have enough," she said. "And I'd rather have no walls. The walls are an eyesore."

Despite the ambivalence, demand from companies for walls is increasing as oil and gas drilling expands north of metro Denver. The sound-wall company Behrens and Associates Environmental Noise Control, based in Los Angeles, recently bought 5.5 acres east of Longmont at Firestone for offices and a large warehouse, chief executive Don Behrens said.

The company is working on about 50 wall projects, including consultations for use of walls to protect the greater sage grouse nesting areas near Hayden on the Western Slope, Behrens said. "During the mating season, the male sage grouse needs, like, three acres. If there is noise on that three acres, he is driven out of the area."

There's little likelihood walls can quell the overall political commotion, he said.

"If someone is convinced there are safety hazards, or carcinogens coming from it, or if someone is anti-oil, I don't think this will help them," Behrens said. "But it sure fixes the noise, light and dust problems."

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